The important project management themes of 2010

Looking back at the year that was, the conferences, the debates, discussions and queries, here is a snapshot of some of the most prominent project management themes to receive airtime and spark debate.

Sustainability and renewal

This is not only a key theme to emerge in the King III Report – which stresses the importance of building a sustainable business, having regard to its economic, social and environmental impact here in South Africa – but also featured in several of the presentations at the Project Management South Africa (PMSA) conference and Project Management Institute (PMI) Global Congress.

At the latter event, the keynote presentation by former United States president Bill Clinton was both a reflection of what can and has been accomplished in terms of making the world a better place, and a call to project managers to invest their talents in the very projects that will achieve this goal.

In his presentation at the PMI Global Congress, author Storm Cunningham delivered a keynote centred around his new book, reWealth!: Stake Your Claim in the $2 Trillion reDevelopment Trend That’s Renewing the World. It largely outlines how global super powers can contribute to the “reWealth” of nations, and resonates with the individual and how each of us can profit from sustainable, green revitalisation that attracts investment and leads to regenerative growth.

Closer to home, PMSA’s Western Cape branch president Peter Richards is driving, on behalf of the organisation, a collaboration to develop a framework for projects in society.

According to him, “In broad terms, I see our initiative as a strategy to develop a ‘bottom-up’ approach in response to the mechanism of socially responsible investment (SRI).

“In my view, SRI appears to be a ‘top-down’ approach aimed primarily at a transformation of market governance through the ethical investment of funds in either listed or non-listed entities that meet the requirements for responsible investment by investors as outlined in a document by that name, issued by the United Nations.

“The ‘bottom-up’ approach will seek to develop frameworks to guide capital spending on projects in a manner that also meets these criteria,” Richards adds.

“Key outcomes will include the strengthening of the advisory and performance roles of the project manager as well as the empowerment of all these entities in a manner that will assist them to procure their projects in accordance with the principles as stated above.

“We hope that the result of this endeavour will, in a significant manner, increase the supply of SRI funds in South Africa and thus ensure its future in terms of sustainable and economic growth,” he says.

Agile PM in the post-recession project world

The “Agile Way” has been gaining popularity as a methodology for project management beyond its earlier applications in the software development space. Certainly, in 2010 it featured in every session of the PMI Global Congress, and a half-day workshop was devoted to Agile at the PMSA Conference.

Part of the reason for its growing popularity, Agile champions believe, is that when resources are limited, and there is an urgency to leverage project and programme management to deliver return on investment more effectively, Agile provides a quicker, more cost-effective way to manage strategic organisational objectives, financial returns, effective use of resources, and achieving set time frames.

Agile is incremental, iterative, collaborative as well as evolving.

For those still unsure of what Agile is all about, Siddharta Govindaraj of Silver Stripe Software, in a blog on Slideshare.net, summed up traditional versus the Agile approach as follows: individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and responding to change over following a plan.

Professional development

It was a little disconcerting to hear a number of attendees at the PMI Global Congress intimate that they were there “for the PDUs”, the professional development points that those with the PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) credential need to collect in a three-year cycle in order to retain their PMP status.

While for some this may be the only reason they attend, at least they are present, contributing to the discourse from a professional perspective; and most likely taking away more than they expect in the form of new contacts, useful ideas and a sense of the PM issues they will need to drive in their own environments.

Certification, qualifications and accreditation are a major part of professional development and were top of mind in 2010 at a point in time where one’s marketability is of utmost importance.

Individuals are seeing the benefit of differentiating themselves in the growing pool of project managers, and a constant question is: Which is the best certification or qualification or credential to possess to be most globally relevant?

It is increasingly inherent upon the individual to ask the right questions in this regard, and the professional organisations to clearly explain the differences, similarities and benefits of each so that an informed decision can be made.

Having said that, the PMI credentials are still extremely popular, and South Africa recently saw the graduation of its first recipients of the PMI Risk Management Professional credential.

Hundreds continue to achieve their PMP each year and a handful completes the far more demanding Programme Management Professional certification.

By joining the International Project Management Association (IPMA) in 2010, PMSA is better placed to promote its competence-based, four-tiered certification, based on the IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB3) standard.

By the end of 2010, IPMA estimates a total of 90 750 people certified at Level D (Certified Project Management Associate), 32 300 at Level C (Certified Project Manager), 7 100 at Level B (Certified Senior Project Manager) and 340 at Level A (Certified Project Director) worldwide.

Professionalising project management

Closely linked to professional development is the concept of professionalising project management in a formal manner. This would require the licensing of practitioners, and it was the topic of an energetic debate at the PMSA Conference – featuring Ivor Blumenthal, chief executive officer of the Services Sector Education and Training Authority; and invited speaker Dr Paul Giammalvo, whose doctoral thesis dealt with this very theme.

Blumenthal spoke of the March 2011 deadline for the initiative to formalise and recognise a professional project management designation for South Africa’s project management practitioners, saying: “Now is the time, irrespective of the brand to which you align yourselves, to knit together into a national standard for project management and, more importantly, a national standard for designation.”

Whether or not South Africa’s project management practice across all disciplines and industries is yet mature enough for such a step remains to be seen, but Blumenthal is of the opinion that if you want an identity as a professional in South Africa, “independent of the engineers, doctors, lawyers, plumbers and bus drivers, now is the time.

“You can either be a player in the game of writing the rules for that professional recognition and, therefore, that professional identity, or you can be subject to those rules about what a project management professional looks like,” he said.

Global teams and cross-cultural collaboration

Whether it is due to finding more cost-effective resources in another location, or as a result of globally dispersed initiatives for a multinational corporation, there is an increase in the number of projects that span countries and cultures.

There has been much focus on technology enablers for collaboration in the past few years.

In 2010, the focus was more on what this has meant for the project manager: developing a new set of traits – those that aid understanding of cultural nuances in multicultural teams, essentially a “cultural intelligence” (CI).

As with emotional intelligence (EI), it is believed this can be increased through an individual’s commitment to understanding a culture through its language, history, practices as well as meaningful interaction.

For project managers, it is important to know how project team members from different cultures process and share information, for example, or how much risk is considered acceptable in their part of the world.

With so much focus on doing business with the emerging Brazil, Russia, India, China economies, it is particularly important to note that China, Latin American countries, as well as Japan, Korea and Arab countries are considered high context cultures i.e. they have a higher level of formality around their interactions compared with Western countries, and this alone justifies a focus on growing one’s CI.

Making social media relevant to PM

Related to the heightened awareness around multicultural teams is the growing role of collaboration tools that look at human interaction, eLearning environments or administrative functionality such as document management tools.

The year 2010 saw the release of Social Media for Project Managers, possibly the first book to look specifically at how the world of networking technology and social media can benefit project management.

Written by renowned project management blogger and author Elizabeth Harrin, it captures and responds to all the debate around the relevance and use of social media in recent years, and she effectively suggests a wider view of the concept of social media to include collaboration tools and what typically comes to mind when using the term “social media” such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

In the introduction to her book, Harrin predicts “more of a crossover between pure social media and enterprise collaboration tools, as social media ways of working become the normal approach to running projects”.

Pure social media tools have received mixed reactions from professionals.

Some see them as great for keeping up with friends and family, but not suited to the business environment; while others are gradually including things such as blogs and RSS feeds in their project communication arsenals.

Either way, it is no longer possible to ignore the potential benefits of new media and be open to the potential for change, toward more effective collaboration and communication.

Character traits of project people

Every year seems to see an increased focus on the simple truth that not everyone is cut out to be a good project manager.

There is a trend toward seeing the traits of good leadership, people and communication skills, adaptability to change and other less tangible characteristics as fundamental to good project management, rather than being labelled the “soft skills” of the past.

This emphasis, and the fact that EI can be improved, has made many project managers more introspective about their character, and that of their team members.

In line with this, the different personality profiling techniques remain topical and relevant. The DiSC model (which stands for Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness – a four-dimensional model for human behaviour) and similar approaches to assessing personality types received a mention in one or more forums this year, with each illustrating that it is less about changing the way people behave than about accepting people for their personality type and using this understanding to draw out their strengths and combine personalities in such a way that they comprise an effective team.

Governance, risk and maturity are constant themes for ‘projectised’ organisations, and in South Africa there was a particularly strong theme of project success with all that was achieved before and during the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup tournament.

However, there is a strong sense that in 2010, the emphasis was on the individual project manager, how to spur one’s own personal and professional development and marketability, and contribute to a growing profession and the greater good through meaningful projects and positive change. 

Taryn van Olden